Google announces Chrome OS hardware and first pilot program

By Tim Conneally | Published December 7, 2010, 3:36 PM

One year ago, Google gave the world its first look at Chrome OS, a project taking a new approach to thin clients and terminal computing. The long and the short of Chrome OS is: if the browser is the most-used application on a PC, why would you load it down with anything else?

Chrome OS focuses on computers that are permanently connected, where all apps, data, and user identities and desktops are stored in the cloud. The computers running the OS are designed to be as unencumbered by software as possible, so they can run quickly and reliably. Businesses can run them in secure private clouds just as well as consumers can run them on the public Web.

The project has come to the point where it can start to be tested in the real world, and Google today announced some crucial details about who will be making Chrome notebook computers, when the public can expect them, and how they'll ultimately work.

A HDD That Contains 56 Years of Playboy Bunnies

12:20 AM - December 8, 2010 - By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide US

It's the perfect give for that someone who has no one special.

You might think that anything emblazoned with the Playboy logo is automatically aimed at a certain breed of young women, but you'd be wrong. Here we have just the gift for the Howard Wolowitz in your life: 56 years of Playboy issues on a 250GB external HDD.

Zoom

Fans of 2010 issues will be disappointed to find that the archive stops at the December 2009 issue of the magazine, but we feel that the 650 issues (100,000 pages) they managed to cram on there – from December 1953 onwards – will be more than enough for most Playboy enthusiasts.

The USB 2.0 device costs $300, which is a little pricey for 250GB. Still, we're not here to judge what you deem a fair price for over half a century of porn. The Playboy Cover to Cover hard drive is available for purchase now.

Source: Playboy Archive (via CNet)

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in UK

By RAPHAEL SATTER, Associated Press – 19 mins ago
http://www.ap.org/

LONDON – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange surrendered to London police on Tuesday as part of a Swedish sex-crimes investigation, the latest blow to an organization that faces legal, financial and technological challenges after releasing hundreds of secret U.S. diplomatic cables.

Assange was due at Westminster Magistrate's Court later Tuesday. If he challenges his extradition to Sweden, he will likely be remanded into custody or released on bail until another judge rules on whether to extradite him, a spokeswoman for the extradition department said on customary condition of anonymity.

Since beginning to release the cables last week, WikiLeaks has seen its bank accounts canceled, its web sites attacked and the U.S. government launch a criminal investigation, saying the group has jeopardized national security and diplomatic efforts around the world. It has also seen supporters come to its aid by setting up over 500 mirror sites around the world.

The legal troubles for Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, stem from allegations leveled against him by two women he met while in Sweden over the summer. Assange is accused of rape and sexual molestation in one case and of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in another.

Avast Software Tracks, Shuts Down Pirates

Neil J. Rubenking - PC Magazine – Mon Dec 6, 9:09 am ET
http://www.pcmag.com/

Prague-based Avast Software makes very good antivirus protectionavailable for free. Why, then, would anybody pirate a license for their paid Pro edition? Well, there are a couple features only found in the Pro edition and in Avast Internet Security 5.0.

Pro users get Script Shield protection against Web-based script viruses as well as added protection from the product's "virtualization sandbox." Apparently those bonus features were enough to tempt the pirates. Or perhaps they just couldn't resist the challenge in the product's name.

Avast's researchers noticed right away when 14 user licenses, issued in 2009, showed up connecting for signature updates from many more than 14 locations. They decided to wait and see just how far it spread. "We made a decision to see just how 'viral' this one license for Avast Pro Antivirus could be," said Vince Steckler, Avast chief executive. "Now we are in the process of converting these pirates over to legal products."

Using geolocation of the IP addresses from which the pirated installations connected, Avast tracked the pirates to over 200 countries. Steckler joked, "The list contains about every country you have heard of, and some you haven't." Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, and Spain topped the list for biggest numbers of pirates, followed by the U.S. Perhaps most surprising were the two licenses connecting from Vatican City.

Visited porn? Web browser flaw secretly bares all

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer – Sun Dec 5, 3:16 pm ET
http://ap.org/

SAN FRANCISCO – Dozens of websites have been secretly harvesting lists of places that their users previously visited online, everything from news articles to bank sites to pornography, a team of computerscientists found.

The information is valuable for con artists to learn more about their targets and send them personalized attacks. It also allows e-commerce companies to adjust ads or prices — for instance, if the site knows you've just come from a competitor that is offering a lower price.

Although passwords aren't at risk, in harvesting a detailed list of where you've been online, sites can create thorough profiles on its users.

The technique the University of California, San Diego researchers investigated is called "history sniffing" and is a result of the way browsers interact with websites and record where they've been. A few lines of programming code are all a site needs to pull it off.

Although security experts have known for nearly a decade that such snooping is possible, the latest findings offer some of the first public evidence of sites exploiting the problem. Current versions of the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers still allow this, as do older versions of Chrome and Safari, the researchers said.

StarCraft 2 Cheat Codes Officially Revealed

1:20 PM - December 4, 2010 
by Kevin Parrish - source: Blizzard


Blizzard cleared the air in regards to using official StarCraft 2 cheat codes in the single-player campaign.

Friday Blizzard cleared the air in regards to using the official cheat codes in StarCraft 2's single-player campaign. Previously gamers received conflicting messages from Blizzard, with Customer Services admitting that it's banning players using cheat codes in the single-player mode while another representative claimed that players can use them safely.

The problem with using cheats-- whether they're programmed by Blizzard or offered by a 3rd-party application-- is that they affect the user's achievements and overall score. Blizzard wants gamers to earn their scores and achievements honestly, however there seems to be some understanding that sometimes players need God Mode or Instant Victory. With that said, Blizzard has released a list of official cheat codes sanctioned for use in StarCraft 2.

But there's a catch.

"Before using cheat codes it’s important to understand that using them will prevent additional achievement gains you might have earned through normal play until either a new campaign is started or a prior save is loaded (one from before the use of the first cheat)," the company said Friday. "All of these cheat codes have been added deliberately to the game and unlike third-party hacks or cheats won’t flag an account for suspension."

Facebook founder rolls out changes to profile pages

AFP - Monday, December 6
http://www.afp.com/

WASHINGTON (AFP) - – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled changes to member profile pages on Sunday and said the movie "The Social Network" got "hugely basic" things wrong about the origins of the site.

Zuckerberg, in an interview with the CBS show "60 Minutes, said he turned down an opportunity to sell Facebook to Yahoo! for one billion dollars four years ago and made it clear he is in no hurry to take the company public.

The 26-year-old Facebook chief executive also defended his approach to the privacy of the social network's more than 500 million users, saying "we never sell your information."

"Advertisers who are using the site never get access to your information," he said. "It's against all of our policies for an application to ever share information with advertisers.

"Now, do we get it right all the time? No!" he said. "But it's something that we take really seriously."

Cloak your connection to foil Firesheep snoopers

Top Story - windowssecrets.com, 
November 4, 2010
By Woody Leonhard 


In his Oct. 28 In the Wild column, Robert Vamosi showed how easy it is to snoop a Wi-Fi connection using a clever Firefox add-in called Firesheep.

If you're serious about protecting your surfing from prying eyes while on an unencrypted public Wi-Fi connection, the onus is on you to lock down your connections. Using virtual private networking (VPN) is one of the best ways I know to do that.

Firesheep has raised the awareness — and hackles — of Wi-Fi users all over the world. It exploits an old, well-known problem called sidejacking. Eric Butler, the author of Firesheep, describes the situation succinctly in his Firesheep post:

"When logging into a Web site you usually start by submitting your username and password. The server then checks to see if an account matching this information exists and if so, replies back to you with a 'cookie,' which is used by your browser for all subsequent requests."

Most Web sites protect your username and password with a secure HTTPS connection. Unfortunately, many immediately drop back into insecure HTTP once a visitor is signed in — and the site sends its cookie back over a now-insecure connection. Anybody snooping on your conversation can make a copy of the cookie and use it to interact with the Web site in precisely the same way you do. This is a process known as sidejacking.

Firesheep makes it point-and-click easy to monitor Wi-Fi signals and look for cookies shouted out in the clear. It specifically sidejacks interactions with popular sites such as Amazon, CNET, Facebook, Flickr, Windows Live (including Hotmail), Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, and others.

Your next PC: thinking beyond the desktop

Top Story - windowssecrets.com, 
December 2, 2010
By Woody Leonhard 


With Black Friday a fading memory and Cyber Monday deals still fresh on the Web, visions of a new PC may be dancing in your head.

But before you go out hunting for that shiny new Win7 machine, take a deep breath, sit back, and consider these tips on buying a PC.

The first and most important tip? Ask yourself whether you need another Windows-based desktop — there are some excellent alternatives. In fact, for home computing, Windows is becoming less and less relevant. More of the services and applications we use are on the Web than in our PCs. And there are now many ways to work on the Web that are cheaper, easier, or just more fun than sitting at a desk and staring into a PC screen.

Call of Duty Players Decimate World Population

9:40 PM - December 2, 2010 
By Rico Mossesgeld 
Source : Tom's Guide US


Black Ops player kill over two-third of humanity, while Treyarch and Activision’s efforts pay off.

Just how popular has Call of Duty: Black Ops Been? Statistics released by developer Treyarch last week indicate that the game’s players have killed the equivalent of 69% of the world’s population—a death toll of around 4.7 billion. 23,548,521 players died as a result of backstabs, while over 2 billion rounds of ammunition have been fired by players.

More gameplay statistics: 345,234 players picked up the gun of a recent kill, then used the same gun to kill its previous owner. Jeffrey MacCormack finds the stats disturbing, citing that “1,193,221 people have stalked another soldier for a full minute before knifing him in the back, then laughing.”

WikiLeaks Switched, Banned From Amazon

9:50 PM - December 2, 2010
By Rico Mossesgeld 
Source : Tom's Guide US

Last November 30, Wikileaks announced through Twitter that it was experiencing a massive distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack amounting to 10 Gigabits a second. DDOS attacks attempt to overwhelm network servers, with the goal of making the websites they support unavailable to web surfers.

Wikileaks is a whistleblower site that has once again made headlines for its leak of over a quarter million of sensitive American diplomatic cables. The website, ostensibly to protect itself from the DDOS, started transferring its operations from Swedish host PRQ to Amazon’s servers as early as last Sunday, November 28. While well-known for its online retail store, Amazon also leases out its own dedicated servers to other companies, under the Amazon Web Services (AWS) brand.

Is Your Health on the Line?

By Sascha de Gersdorff, Women's Health
Wed, Nov 10, 2010


Unless you've had your cell phone permanently glued to your ear, chances are you've heard the recent health buzz: Mobile devices may cause cancer. While it's true that the National Cancer Institute has ruled them safe, a growing number of independent researchers disagree.

Those experts point out that the FCC wireless regulations on cell phone safety are largely based on something called specific absorption rate (SAR) levels, or the rate at which our bodies absorb radiation. Most phones do comply with the federal standards, but SAR monitors only thermal effects. (In other words, if the radiation from your phone isn't cooking your brain, it's regarded as safe.) But mounting scientific evidence suggests that nonthermal radio frequency radiation (RF)—the invisible energy waves that connect cell phones to cell towers, and power numerous other everyday items—can damage our immune systems and alter our cellular makeup, even at intensities considered safe by the FCC.